In his Feb. 14 article, ”Program teaches young professors to teach,”
Frank James claims ”most Ph.D.s wind up in the classroom,” ”research univer-sities simply produce students who`ve never been taught to teach” and ”two-year colleges pay McDonald`s wages.”
In fact, more than 60 percent of Ph.D.s don`t teach; they per-form research and development, administrative and professional services. About 20 percent of all doctorates are conferred in the field of education, and my local community college pays new part-time faculty about $24 per class hour.
Curiously, James overlooks a growing need to train part-time college faculty to teach. Between 1970 and 1987, part-time college faculty increased from 22 to 34 percent nationwide. To this end, the College of Lake County`s Professional Growth Center provided 50 hours of training for more than 350 part-time faculty during 1990-91.
